Best Hip Hop Album (Unsigned/Independent) of 2011

Reader's Pick

Tech N9ne has long been a walking paradox—a major-league indie talent who caters to a cult following so sizable it might be better described as a religion—but he's never flaunted his contradictions as proudly as on All 6's & 7's. The Strange Music general's 12th studio album finds him inhabiting a world entirely his own: a world where the beats are hard, the rhymes come at lightning speed, and rap's biggest stars rub shoulders with burgeoning rhymesayers (along with the occasional rock musician).

Staff Pick

Hip-hop fans love to debate, maybe even more than they love listening to hip-hop. That's exactly what makes Kendrick Lamar's #Section80 so remarkable. When the young TDE representative released his album everyone, and I mean everyone, nodded their heads in agreement. "Yeah, that's a really dope album," they all admitted. That type of consensus is unheard of, but a young emcee with Kendrick's combination of lyricism and creative vision is almost unheard of as well.